Dundee man caused ac­ci­dent that killed his friends.

A man whose driv­ing led to the death of two of his friends as they re­turned from a hol­i­day in Lan­zarote has been or­dered to carry out 180 hours of un­paid work and banned from the road for two and a half years.

Thirty-year-old Alexan­der McCabe of Quar­ry­side, Dundee, pled guilty on Novem­ber 1 at Ed­in­burgh Sher­iff Court to caus­ing the death by care­less driv­ing of 26-year old Marc Edwards and his part­ner Jenna Tin­dall, 29.

Two men, Jonathan Walker and Ke­iron Wil­cox, were also in­jured in the crash on July 18 last year.

Sen­tence had been de­ferred un­til yes­ter­day for re­ports.

The court heard that Mr McCabe, his part­ner, Nicola Brown, and their sev­enyear old daugh­ter, had been on a week’s hol­i­day in Lan­zarote with their friends and their seven-year old daugh­ter.

They were re­turn­ing home to Dundee from New­cas­tle Air­port. Mr McCabe and Ms Brown were in the front seats of

“The word ‘tragedy’ is nowa­days very much overused, but it is the word that springs to mind when con­sid­er­ing th­ese events

his Mercedes with their daugh­ter in the back, while Mr Edwards and Ms Tin­dall were in their Vaux­hall Corsa with their daugh­ter in the rear seat.

The Corsa was in front of the Mercedes as they ap­proached the round­about at the junc­tion of the A68 with the A720 at Miller­hill at around 3am. The Mercedes struck the rear of the Corsa, push­ing it into the path of a Vaux­hall Vi­varo van, be­ing driven in the op­po­site di­rec­tion by Mr Walker and his pas­sen­ger, Mr Wil­cox.

Mr Edwards and Ms Tin­dall were killed and the two men in the van in­jured, Mr Walker se­ri­ously and Mr Wil­cox with mi­nor in­juries.

The two lit­tle girls did not re­quire treat­ment. The Mercedes had been trav­el­ling at an av­er­age speed of 46 mph.

Sen­tenc­ing Mr McCabe, Sher­iff O’Grady told him: “The word ‘tragedy’ is nowa­days very much overused, but it is the word that inevitably and jus­ti­fi­ably springs to mind when con­sid­er­ing th­ese events. The con­se­quences of this of­fence have been truly hor­ren­dous.”

McCabe, he said, had not been af­fected by drink or drugs and had not de­lib­er­ately driven in some out­ra­geous or reck­less fash­ion.

“From what I have been told, you did not do any­thing or fail to do any­thing which would ob­vi­ously leave you un­fit to un­der­take this jour­ney,” he said.

He added that McCabe’s ex­pres­sions of re­gret and re­morse were gen­uine.